Staying on top of email was mostly manageable before March 2020. However, when everyone went virtual and communication went entirely digital, my inbox exploded and I found it so much harder to stick to my to-do list and manage my time.
We use Microsoft Outlook in our school division and its calendar function is the primary tool used to schedule meetings and appointments. However, it can also be used for time-blocking. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this productivity method, followers of it schedule or block time on their calendars for tasks on their to-do list in advance. I recommend a simple Google search to learn more about this strategy.
I don’t use time-blocking exclusively and you don’t have to either to take advantage of this awesome tip I discovered on Tik Tok.
Emails tend to fall onto a continuum of informative or actionable. Informative emails can be easily retrieved by searching your inbox. However, actionable items are far more likely to be missed or forgotten. I used the first tip in the video below to schedule a time to follow up on emails with a category I color-coded in red designated as “To-Do”.
Because these email actions items would show up on my calendar, I became less anxious about missing something important and more focused on getting things done. I even saved time previously wasted from going back through my emails since now each scheduled task in my calendar had any information from the email included in the appointment. It was a total game-changer for me.
Watch the video from @tatechtips and give it this and his other Outlook hacks a try!